Dark Eden

aren’t there? Eden is one, isn’t it, and so is Earth. Sky is full of stones.’
    It was weird. I knew all that stuff, the same as he did. It was part of the True Story. But I’d never once before thought of those stones as really being in the same world as me.
    ‘Let’s follow a stream,’ Jeff said, ‘and see where the water goes.’
    He led the way downhill. Soon we heard the waterfall roar quite definitely ahead of us beneath the humming of forest. A bit later we started to feel drops of spray on our faces. And then, in the lowest part of the valley bowl, forest just stopped and there was a huge jagged hole right in front of us, with water pouring into it over steep cliffs from streams on every side, and warm steam rising up from below.
    The bottom of the hole was full of steam, but, as we stood at the edge of it looking down, the steam thinned out for a few seconds, enough for us to make out the blurry lights of trees far far down below, red and blue and yellow and white.
    ‘Michael’s names,’ I murmured.
    It was a way down into Underworld, where all life on Eden began, all life except for us.
    Def was restless with all the noise, and Jeff was stroking its head to calm it down, all the time looking down into Underworld. I saw his lips move and, though I couldn’t hear him, I knew quite well what he was saying.
    ‘We are here,’ he was murmuring to himself. ‘We really are here.’
    Then he pointed. Four monkeys had gathered on the edge of the cliff over to our left. They were peering down into the steam with their flat Eden eyes, and, strangely, each one of them had shoved a big stone right up to the edge. Suddenly they jumped into the hole, not stretching out their arms to fly like the ones we’d seen in the trees, but grasping their stones beneath them with all six hands, so that the flappy skin puffed out between their arms and slowed their fall as they disappeared into the steam.
    ‘We could do that,’ I said to Jeff, after a bit. ‘We could sew up skins and make something like that to break our fall.’
    That made him laugh. He laughed and laughed, until even I couldn’t help smiling.
    ‘I never give it a rest, yeah? Is that what you’re thinking?’
    ‘No, you bloody don’t, John. It’s like everything in the world is just stuff for you to use for your plans.’
    He carried on stroking Def, and watching the water dropping down through the steam.
    ‘And anyway, how would we get back out again?’ he said after a bit.
    ‘We could make ropes.’
    This made him laugh again.
    ‘Big big ropes they’d have to be.’
    The woollybuck groaned and snorted, and Jeff turned to attend to it. I leaned over the edge to look straight down. The steam had cleared a bit again, and I could see those shining trees again, way way down below: red and blue and yellow. And then I saw something moving down there, a row of ten twelve red lights weaving through the lights of the trees.
    ‘Jeff! Quick! Look!’
    But steam blew back before Jeff had a chance to turn away from Def, and when it next cleared the moving lights had gone. It was only me that saw that long long creature winding its way through the trees.
    ‘What did you see?’
    ‘Just those trees down there again,’ I said.
    Suddenly I jumped to my feet with a gasp and backed away from that dreadful hole. It was weird. I was shaking. It was like it had almost sucked me in.
    ‘What’s the matter, John?’
    ‘I don’t like this place.’
    ‘This hole, do you mean? Or Tall Tree Valley?’
    ‘Neither.’
    ‘You really don’t, do you?’
    Still standing with Def by the edge of the hole, Jeff looked back at me and smiled.
    It was horrible to think that, even for a moment, I’d suggested we might go down into that hole. It was like Underworld had been trying to trick me, to suck me away from sky and Earth.
    ‘We can’t stay here, Jeff. We’ll have to go back up on Dark and carry on to other side.’
    ‘No one will go up Dark with you now, John,’ Jeff said, climbing back onto Def’s back. ‘Not even Gerry.’
    I pulled off Gela’s ring and started to twist and turn it between my fingers.
    ‘Okay, so I’ll just have to wait till the time’s right. But we can’t stay here forever, Jeff. We can’t!’
    He didn’t answer. He just watched my fingers playing with Gela’s ring.
    After a bit, feeling calmer, I passed it to him to hold. He studied it for a few seconds and then handed it straight back to me, the ring that Angela was